Union Portraits: I. Joseph Hooker

I

To say that the outer man was the best part of Hooker would be manifestly unjust. But all agree that the outer man was magnificent. He was tall, thoroughly martial in bearing, with blonde hair, finely cut features, an expressive mouth, and large gray eyes full of fire and sympathy. The rich glow of his complexion characterized him from boyhood, so that an enthusiastic female admirer declared when he left West Point, that with his ruddy cheeks, blue coat, and white trousers, he was a perfect epitome of the American flag. Villard thought only one other man in the whole army, Hancock, approached Hooker in the splendor of his exterior. But General Walker observes shrewdly, ‘He was handsome and picturesque in the extreme, but with a fatally weak chin.’ Turn to almost any of the portraits and you will see what General Walker means. Bear it in mind in our further study.

Hooker was a Massachusetts man, born in Hadley in 1814. His father seems to have had no great force of character, but his mother was high-principled, energetic, and had much influence over her children. It is said that she intended her son for the church. Failing this, she doubtless supplemented the education given him at the local academy, and sent him to West Point with the average mental equipment of a cadet of that day.

At West Point he did not stand very high. But there is a notable legend that he would have stood much higher than twenty-eighth in his class, if his decided combative tendencies had not injured him with the faculty. Whether this be true or not, straight-out fighting was his line in life. Where he could fight, he succeeded. Where he could not, his success was much less marked. And he sometimes fought those who should not have been his enemies.

In the Mexican War he won distinction and deserved it. He showed personal bravery and the rarer gift of inspiring bravery in others. Thrice he was brevetted, a distinction which fell to few others, if to any. He served on the staff of General Pillow, and his enthusiastic biographer asserts that he furnished ‘all the brains and most of the energy and industry to be found at the headquarters of that division.’ Perhaps this is slightly exaggerated.

Everybody knows that Hooker was called ‘Fighting Joe.’ Not everybody knows that the name was not given by the troops but in pure accident by a newspaper compositor, who, having to interpret the telegraphic abbreviation ‘fighting — Joe Hooker,’ dropped the dash and created a world-known sobriquet. Hooker did not like the name, or said he did not; thought that it made him seem like a highwayman or bandit. And perhaps it has hurt him as much as it has helped him.

When the Civil War began, Hooker was entirely suited. He did not receive a commission till after Bull Run, but in the Peninsula battles nobody did better fighting than he. At Williamsburg his division distinguished itself highly. ‘In every engagement,’ says General Rusling, ‘he always seemed to know what to do and when to do it.’ McClellan, indeed, depreciated his subordinate and there was not much kindliness between them. But in this instance history justifies Hooker. And his own reported comment on his commander’s coldness is a pleasant example of the frank humor which must have been an element of his social charm. ‘I say, Mott, it seems to me you and I, and your Jersey Blues, and the Excelsior Brigade, were not at Williamsburg at all. Hancock did the business.’

This social charm was felt by all who came closely into contact with the general, and for this and other things he was unquestionably much beloved by his troops. He talked with them as man to man, took a personal interest in their doings, did not let great affairs thrust out little kindnesses. General Rusling once went to his division commander to get leave for an invalid, and was refused even attention. Then he made his way to Hooker, at that time commander-in-chief. ‘Let me have the paper,’ Hooker said. ‘I’ll show General—— a “ leave” can be granted without his approval in a case like this.’ When Berry was killed, Hooker ‘with tears in his eyes kissed his forehead and said, “ My God, Berry, why was the man on whom I relied so much to be taken away in this manner?”’ These things touch the soldier’s heart, touch any man’s. Hooker was just, too, and fair in dealing with his subordinates. General Reynolds writes me: ‘I was with him every day for eight months, and I say without hesitancy, I never knew a man who tried to be fairer and treat every one more justly than he did. He would treat the lowest in rank with the same courtesy as the highest, and no commander was more beloved by his troops than was he by the 20th Corps.’

The fighting reputation that Hooker had won on the Peninsula continued and increased through the second Bull Run campaign and at Antietam, where he was wounded after doing great damage to the Confederate left. His energy and vigor showed, not only in bare fighting, but in strenuous effort to keep his troops responsive and his officers efficient. With what force does he express himself against an attempt to deprive him of one of the best of them. ‘I have just been shown an order relieving Brigadier-General Reynolds from the command of a division in my corps. I request that the majorgeneral commanding will not heed this order; a scared governor ought not to be permitted to destroy the usefulness of an entire division of the army on the eve of important operations.’

But his most attractive mood is undoubtedly that in which he feels the thrill and enthusiasm of actual battle. ‘The whole morning had been one of unusual animation to me and fraught with the grandest events. The conduct of the troops was sublime, and the occasion almost lifted me to the skies, and its memories will ever remain with me.’

This was at Antietam, where there was triumph. Even finer, from a moral point of view, was the general’s attitude at Fredericksburg, where there was defeat. Though he would expose his men regardlessly in battle, he was always thoughtful of their welfare, so far as was compatible with duty. When some neglect was shown in the handling of ambulances, his rebuke was severe. ‘I regret more than all to find two officers of my command, holding high and responsible positions, showing so little concern for the welfare and efficiency of the command to which they are assigned as to seek by artifice and unfairness to destroy one and disregard the other.’ Hence it was that this fighter, this man who would face anything and was lifted almost to the skies by the exhilaration of combat, would not fling his soldiers against the impossible without a protest. When Burnside ordered the charge, ‘I sent my aide to General Burnside to say that I advised him not to attack at that place. He returned saying that the attack must be made. I had the matter so much at heart that I put spurs to my horse and rode over here myself and tried to persuade General Burnside to desist from the attack. He insisted on its being made.’ It was made, magnificently, and failed magnificently. Said Hooker of it later, with caustic frankness: ‘Finding that I had lost as many men as my orders required me to lose, I suspended the attack.’

Thus the country generally saw Hooker, on the eve of the battle of Chancellorsville, in April, 1863, a splendid, vigorous, successful soldier and corps-commander, full of fight, yet not without prudence, widely popular and fairly trusted. The germs of his defects had been manifest long before, however, and we must look into them closely in preparation for our study of the great climax of his life.

All generalizations are dangerous, and all the adjectives we apply to character are generalizations. The Southern officer, Magruder, an honest and straightforward soldier, who had served in the same regiment with Hooker in former days, told Fremantle that Hooker was ‘essentially a mean man and a liar.' Hooker did mean things and made false statements. So have you. So have I. But it is not just, I hope, to call you a liar, or me, or Hooker. Again, Palfrey, who knew him well, says that he was ‘Brave, handsome, vain, insubordinate, plausible, untrustworthy.’ These are strong words. Some of them may be justified, not all.

But let us leave the generalizations. Concretely, it has always been said that Hooker drank too much. The testimony as to this is conflicting. When he left West Point, he was a total abstainer, yet the florid complexion, which later was attributed to alcohol, was just as marked in the cadet as in the major-general. Wearied with the piping times of peace, Hooker went to California, in the wild gold days. There he farmed with small success, and no doubt he lived as many about him were living, — unprofitably, to say the least. There is a story that he borrowed money from Halleck and Sherman, that he came to San Francisco on Saturday to make payment, after closing hours, and that by Monday morning the money was gone. This, with similar incidents, is said to have been the origin of Halleck’s and Sherman’s prejudice against him. The anecdote does not, however, seem quite compatible with a sentence in a confidential letter from Halleck to Sherman, September 16, 1864. ‘He [Hooker] is aware that I know something about his character and conduct in California, and fearing that I may use it against him, he seeks to ward off its effects by making it appear that I am his personal enemy.’

Another curious (if true) detail about this California life is furnished by Stoneman. Hooker, he says, ‘could play the best game of poker I ever saw until it came to the point when he should go a thousand better, and then he would flunk.’ This may have been colored by recollections of Chancellorsville. Still, when I read it, I am reminded of that weak chin.

Whatever the dissipations of the California life, they cannot have been damning, since he afterwards came to fill positions of honor and trust in the great western state, and his friends there subscribed to pay his expenses on to Washington when the war began.

As with Halleck and Sherman thus early, however, he had the serious defect of offending wantonly those whom he should not have offended. In Mexico, for instance, he had been attached to the staff of Pillow. When Pillow was arraigned and his conduct investigated on the charges of Scott, Hooker spoke his mind with entire freedom in defense of his chief and gained the hostility of the senior general. As a consequence of this, the California recruit waited for some time vainly before he could enter the Army of the Potomac.

In this case it was Hooker’s tongue that damaged him, and it cannot be denied that all his life that insignificant member caused him a great deal of trouble. It was a splendidly vivid and energetic tongue, could stir an army to a charge, could cheer and stimulate a friend and smite an enemy. With what a keen flash does it lighten the metallic brevity of a dispatch. ’The enemy may number 4000, or 5000, those half starved and badly wounded. The number of major-generals and brigadiergenerals they have along is of no consequence; they are flesh and blood.’

But this same tongue could work astonishing havoc with reputations, most of all its owner’s. It could brand individuals with a hot iron. ‘If General Sumner had advanced the rebellion would have been buried there. He did not advance at all.’ Do you think General Sumner loved that tongue? It could blight, if unintentionally, a whole arm of the service. ‘Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?’ At the very outset of the war it achieved one of its most remarkable feats, unsurpassed, if equaled, later. Tired of seeking employment from direct military authority and ready to return to California, Hooker called on the President to explain his position. After explaining it, he concluded with the casual comment, ‘I was at Bull Run the other day, Mr. President, and it is no vanity in me to say I am a damned sight better general than you had on that field.’ Must it not have been, indeed, a man of power who could utter such words as that and actually make Lincoln believe them?

Well, the tongue went on its way, along with the hand and sword, through the Peninsula, through Antietam and Fredericksburg. McClellan! Hooker had no use for McClellan and said so. McClellan was a baby. McClellan dared not fight. If McClellan had done as Hooker urged and wished, Richmond would have been ours in the spring of 1862. The subordinate testified formally before the Committee on the Conduct of the War that the failure of the Peninsula campaign was ‘to be attributed to the want of generalship on the part of the commander.’

When Burnside succeeded McClellan, it was the same with Burnside. Villard, as a newspaper man, met Hooker for the first time and had scarcely introduced himself when the general burst into unsparing criticism of the government, of Halleck, of McClellan, and especially of his immediate superior. To his fellow soldiers he naturally did not hesitate to express the same opinion; and when he was himself in supreme command, he wrote about his predecessor words of almost incredible violence. Hooker ‘cannot bear to go into battle with the slanders of this wretch uncontradicted and the author of them unchastised. He must swallow his words as soon as I am in a condition to address him, or I will hunt him to the ends of the earth.’ By the way, I am not aware that the wretch ever did swallow his words, or ever was hunted.

A dangerous tongue, indeed, you see, and perhaps there was a little trouble back of the tongue, perhaps the thinking brain was not quite so perfect an instrument as the acting hand. When that bluff Confederate, Whiting, writes to Beauregard, ‘Hooker is a fool, and always was, and that’s a comfort,’ the exaggerated estimate deserves notice chiefly because it is certain to have been common Confederate property and so to have made its way to Lee and to have been his best excuse for Jackson’s apparently most hazardous movement at Chancellorsville. But when Chase, Hooker’s warm supporter, after a confidential talk with the general, remarks that he ‘impressed me favorably as a frank, manly, brave, and energetic soldier, of somewhat less breadth of intellect than I had expected,’ the thoughtful observer is prepared for a career which shall blend its triumph with failure, if not disaster.

II

To this man, then, such as we have seen him, Lincoln, in January, 1863, confided the splendid Army of the Potomac and the salvation of the Union. The President had his serious misgivings and expressed them in a wellknown letter, surely one of the most singular ever received by a great general on undertaking an important command. Lincoln warns his subordinate against ambition, warns him against over-confidence, warns him not to talk about a dictatorship until he has done things worthy of it, warns him to fear the spirit of insubordination in the army which Hooker himself has been the most forward to cultivate. One can easily imagine the impatient contempt with which McClellan would have received such a letter. Well, all that is really fine and winning and lovable in Hooker shines out in his simple comment to his officers on receiving it. ‘He talks to me like a father. I shall not answer this letter until I have won him a great victory.’

But, alas, the general entered upon his important duties without the real confidence of the higher officers under him. ‘He had wounded some by openly criticizing them,’ says De Trobriand, ‘he had alienated others by putting himself forward at their expense.’ And again that fatal tongue intervened, with trouble at its tip. Grand reviews, riding in gold and glitter, on equal footing with presidents and ministers, that splendid army in the spring sunshine set over against those starved and ragged rebels, engendered a confidence which would burst from lips not tutored to keep still. ‘The finest army on the planet.’ ‘The operations of the last three days have determined that our enemy must either ingloriously fly, or give us battle on our own ground where certain destruction awaits him.’ ‘My plans are perfect, and when I start to carry them out, may God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.’ ‘ The enemy is in my power, and God Almighty cannot deprive me of them.’ Such words as these suggest the Nemesis of Greek tragedy and give an enthralling interest to the dramatic story of the man who uttered them.

At first all went well. Through the spring months the general reorganized the demoralized army, and did it admirably. Here is another of the delightful psychological contradictions in this extraordinary man. You think he was an impetuous firebrand. Yet he distinguished himself most of all in the slow, fretful labor of systematizing and perfecting the instrument he was to use.

Then, with the warm April days, came the preparations for action. The plan finally adopted is said to have originated, to some extent, with Warren. With whomsoever it originated, all admit that it was an able strategic design. From the point of view of Hooker’s character, we note again, in this regard, a singular contradiction. Here was a man who always talked too freely, who was notorious for saying things he should not have said; yet, the minute the full burden rested on his shoulders, he kept still. Even to his nearest subordinates he whispered no word of his intention, except so far as necessary orders required.

The general plan of campaign was simple. Hooker’s army was massed on the north side of the Rappahannock, Lee’s on the south, in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. Hooker proposed first crossing his cavalry well up the river, to threaten or break the communications of Lee. Then the bulk of the army was to cross above the enemy, sweep round with a great turning movement and drive him toward the east, while another force, under Sedgwick, crossing at Fredericksburg, was to bar retreat in that direction and crush the small army of the Confederates between the two.

From the beginning, the weak point of the scheme was the combined action with Sedgwick. Still, the first steps went admirably. The great crossing, by the upper fords, was made before the enemy divined it, with entire success. Corps after corps swept forward triumphantly into the Wilderness and it seemed as if Lee would really be crushed, as his enemy had intended. But Lee did not propose to be crushed. He met the advancing battalions in a much more aggressive fashion than Hooker expected. And suddenly this check in his plans seemed to chill the buoyant spirit of the Union commander. Instead of urging his generals, on! on! he sent word to them, Withdraw, the woods are too thick, the enemy too strong, let us establish ourselves safely at Chancellorsville and wait. It was like a burst balloon, like a great ship set aback all at once and left shivering in a change of wind. ‘To hear from his own lips that the advantages gained by the successful marches of his lieutenants were to culminate in fighting a defensive battle in that nest of thickets was too much, and I retired from his presence with the belief that my commanding general was a whipped man,’ says Couch.

So thought Lee and Jackson also. The next day, May 2, Jackson, with a large part of Lee’s army, made his way through the woods across Hooker’s front and past his right. Then, toward evening, the Confederates fell, like a whirlwind, upon the Union right flank, Howard and his Eleventh Corps, who had hardly dreamed of such an onset and had done little or nothing to prevent it. It is not necessary to apportion the blame strictly in this matter. There is enough for every one, — Hooker, Howard, the division commanders, and the troops,— enough and some left over. The disaster was as appalling as it was unexpected, and it might have been much worse, if night, the fatigue of the Confederates, and the wounding of Jackson, had not intervened.

Where was Hooker? Doing what a brave and energetic soldier could do to repair immediate damage, but hardly grasping the general situation as an able commander should have grasped it. The next morning gave him his opportunity, but instead of profiting, he fought a slow defensive battle, in which the energetic masses of Lee and Stuart had all the advantage.

Then the general was severely injured by the falling of a wooden pillar, and some think the accident robbed him of great glory, and some that for him it was a piece of rare good fortune.

Even before, his subordinates felt that he had lost his hold. It has been said, without sufficient foundation, that he was drinking. It has been said that he was wholly abstemious and missed his drink. This would certainly be the first case in history of a great battle lost because the general-in-chief was not intoxicated.

Be that as it may, after he was injured, he ceased to be of any great value on the field of Chancellorsville. His admirers maintain that the injury is amply sufficient to account for this. They say that his second in command, Couch, should have assumed the direction of affairs and pushed the fighting. Couch himself, however, absolutely refused to assume responsibility when he might be interfered with at any moment. And he and many others hold that Hooker’s control was no less efficient after the wound than it was before. ‘There is, in fact, no reason to suppose that his orders would have been wise, even if he had not been struck,’ says the latest authority on the battle, Colonel W. R. Livermore. Still, still I remember that weak chin.

The small Confederate army could not, however, make any ruinous impression on the Union masses. What, then, was to be done? Behold, the general who had clutched his foe so tightly that Almighty God could not extricate him, was now for recrossing the river and beginning all over again. It seems supplies had run short. ‘I think,’ says one authority, ‘if we can imagine Grant allowing his army to be placed where Hooker’s was at noon on that day, that he would have made his soldiers fry their boots, if there was nothing else to eat, before he would have recrossed the river.’ But Hooker was not disposed to fry boots. He called his corps commanders into council. A majority of them voted to remain where they were, Meade, to be sure, alleging that recrossing might be difficult with the enemy at their heels, to which Hooker answered that Lee would be delighted to have them on the other side of the Rappahannock. Is there not a maxim of Napoleon’s about never doing what your enemy wishes you to do? If so, Hooker had forgotten it. He overruled his subordinates, ordered the puzzled Sedgwick to withdraw also, and with the best speed he could took back that great, unconquered army to the place it had left a week before with banners waving and all the royal assurance of undoubted triumph.

The army was unconquered, but the general was beaten badly, and what was much worse, the cause had received another crushing blow. It was not merely that so many men had been killed and wounded. It was not merely that Lee, with inferior numbers, had managed to sustain himself instead of giving an inch of ground. It was that all the strength and all the valor of the North had been exerted once more and had utterly failed. It was that a fifth commander had been allowed to work his pleasure with that long-suffering army and still the rebellion was as haughty, as energetic, as aggressive as ever. So that Lincoln fell on his knees and told his God that the country could not endure another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville.

But Hooker? Did he look at the thing in this way? Not the least bit in the world. In the midst of the battle his confidence seems to have been for a little time shaken. But he quickly recovered himself. The tremendous moral effect of the whole adventure, after all his vaunts, seems to have escaped him completely. On the very day of the recrossing he issued general orders, the tone of which is almost incredible. ‘In fighting at a disadvantage, we would have been recreant, to our trust, to ourselves, to our cause, and our country. Profoundly loyal, and conscious of its strength, the Army of the Potomac will give or decline battle when its interest or honor may demand. It will also be the guardian of its own history and its own fame.’ Alas, no! Big words will guard no one’s fame, when they are not accompanied by big deeds. Even then, the deeds do better alone. And when later, sober thought had had all its opportunity, the general could still write in a confidential letter to a friend, ‘We lost no honors at Chancellorsville.’

This desperate determination to admit no failure of course developed a disposition to put what blame there was on others. The tendency did not appear immediately after the battle, and Hooker’s omission to make any official report and to turn in many of his records has been taken by some to mean a desire to avoid condemning his subordinates, especially Howard. If so, his charity lessened with time. When he was anxious to appear before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, in April, 1864, he wrote, ‘As it seems determined that I shall hold no important command hereafter, it becomes necessary for me to have less care for the future than for the past, so far as my professional character is concerned. In my judgment the records connected with my command of the Army of the Potomac had better be made up, no matter who may suffer from it.’

He helped make them up with a vengeance, declaring, in sober, sworn testimony, that ‘There are in all armies officers [Howard and Meade are hinted at] more valiant after the fight than while it is pending, and when a truthful history of the rebellion shall be written, it will be found that the Army of the Potomac is not an exception ’; and again, ‘Some of our corps commanders, and also officers of other rank, appear to be unwilling to go into a fight; in my judgment, there are not many who really like a fight.’ This of Sedgwick! While as to his own, Hooker’s, part in the affair there is not a word of apology or of admission of error or weakness.

But all this was later development. For two months after Chancellorsville, Hooker continued in command of the army. It might be supposed experience would have taught him moderation, if not humility. Apparently it did not. In predicting to Butterfield a decisive battle, he declared that he would ‘have every available man in the field, and if Lee escapes with his army the country is entitled to and should have my head for a football.’ Evidently this is still the same tongue that wagged so joyously in the April days on the Rappahannock.

But if Hooker trusted himself, others did not trust him. Halleck’s deeprooted prejudice grew daily stronger, and spread to the members of the Cabinet, in some measure even to Lincoln. As a result, the general was hampered and thwarted in a way which would have made success impossible to a much greater man. It is but justice to Hooker to say that in this difficult situation he bore himself with great dignity, and his serious protests to the President are as modest as they are reasonable. There should be one commander with full power, he says, and adds, ‘I trust I may not be considered in the way to this arrangement, as it is a position I do not desire, and only suggest it, as I feel the necessity for concerted as well as vigorous action.’ In the same spirit he finally asked to be relieved, feeling that the good of the country demanded that some one else, more trusted, should be in his place.

When his suggestion was accepted, and Meade was substituted for him, the finer side of Hooker’s nature again showed itself in the cordial courtesy with which he greeted his successor. It showed itself still more in the request that he might be put back in command of his old division and so continue service with the army. And when this request is disregarded, perhaps wisely for all concerned, nay, even when he is subjected to arrest for the trivial offense of visiting Washington without a pass, he simply writes to the President, with all dignity, requesting an interview in which he may justify himself and set matters once more on the right footing between them.

III

In following Hooker’s later career, in which there is undoubtedly much to criticize, we must always bear in mind what he went through during those first six months of 1863. For a man of his high and imperious spirit to have enjoyed so long the supreme command of ‘the finest army on this planet,’ to fail in that command, and then to be reduced to abject submission to men whom he knew to be his juniors and felt to be his inferiors, was a bitter experience. Many who believe in their own genius never get even one try at greatness; but perhaps to get one try and fail and feel that all hope has utterly slipped away is even harder still. So it was with Hooker, and who shall blame him if at times he grew restive?

Nevertheless, I believe that he obeyed his orders to go west, with a loyal and entire determination to do his duty. According to his view he did it; but it is extraordinarily interesting to study his relations to the various men with whom he came into contact.

His old habit of criticizing and faultfinding seems to have increased rather than lessened. Thus, he condemned freely the proceedings of Rosecrans, which was not unnatural. But he showed equal freedom in discussing the projects of Grant. ‘No doubt the chaos of Rosecrans’s administration is as bad as he describes,’ writes Dana; ‘but he is quite as truculent toward the plan he is now to execute as toward the confusion of the old régime.’ The truculence well appears in the general’s comment on orders received from Grant in the Chattanooga campaign. ‘I am not permitted to advance unless I do so without fighting a battle. This puts me in the condition of the boy who was permitted to learn to swim provided he would not go near the water.’

On the other hand, Grant, imbibing a prejudice, whether from Halleck or otherwise, did not like Hooker. ‘ Grant also wishes to have both Hooker and Slocum removed from his command,’ writes Dana again . . . ‘Hooker has behaved very badly ever since his arrival.’ Perhaps there was some misunderstanding as to the bad behavior. In this connection there is a curious instance of different points of view. Immediately on Grant’s reaching Chattanooga, Hooker, with all the warm courtesy of his disposition, sent to invite his superior to share his headquarters. Wilson, in his life of Dana, assumes that this was an impertinence and justifies the sharp snub with which Grant replied to it. Howard, better understanding Hooker, expresses surprise and regret at Grant’s vehemence of expression, — ‘If General Hooker wishes to see me, he will find me on this train.’

There are plenty of other examples of Grant’s lack of consideration for his distinguished subordinate. In one indorsement he sneers at Hooker’s report of the number of prisoners captured, as being more than that captured by the whole army. Elsewhere he suggests that it would be well if Hooker could be got rid of altogether. But perhaps his harshest criticism is his remark to Young concerning the battle of Lookout Mountain. ‘The battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the war,’ he said. ‘There was no such battle, and no action even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry.’

Now Lookout Mountain, ‘the battle above the clouds,’ is almost universally regarded as one of Hooker’s most substantial claims to glory. The little preceding engagement of Wauhatchie is indeed chiefly noticeable because the general came near repeating there his experience with Howard at Chancellorsville. A piece of careless neglect was prevented only by supreme energy from producing disaster. But the taking of the mountain itself was not only notable as skillful and brilliant fighting under great difficulties, but played a conspicuous part in the success of the battle of Chattanooga, though, to be sure, a part not contemplated in Grant’s plans and therefore, perhaps, treated by him with scant commendation.

It was the same with the Atlanta campaign under Sherman as at Chattanooga. Where there was fighting, Hooker was always at his best. He got his men into battle and kept them there, either to win, or, when winning was a sheer impossibility, to draw off slowly, sullenly, and with terrible loss.

But his defects, like evil angels, walked by him everywhere. Anyone who wishes to understand Hooker thoroughly, all his strength and all his weakness, but the strength and the charm predominating, should not fail to read his immensely long confidential letter to Chase, December 28, 1863, printed in the Official Records, volume 55, page 339. And a similar letter to Stanton of February 25, 1864 (volume 58, page 467) is equally illuminating. All the loyalty is there, all the sterling patriotism, all the instinct of generosity and self-sacrifice. But there also, is the ever-ready disposition to judge others caustically and bitterly, and the fatal habit of expressing that judgment in hot and ill-considered words. And there, further, is the most natural but unfortunate sensitiveness springing from the inevitable comparison of the present and the past. ‘Many of my juniors are in the exercise of independent commands, while I am here with more rank piled on top of me than a man can well stand up under, with a corporal’s guard, comparatively, for a command.’

In this state of mind it was hardly to be expected that Hooker should work in entire harmony with those about him. He had, indeed, his own loyal followers, like Butterfield, who were always ready to support him with hand and pen. His relation with his immediate chief, Thomas, seems also to have been cordial, and Thomas speaks of the Lookout battle in very different language from that of Grant. Of Howard, who so long served under him, Hooker writes with kindness, even with enthusiasm, and praises ‘his zealous and devoted service, not only on the battlefield, but everywhere and at all times.’

The record is less agreeable in other cases, however. It is hard to say whether Slocum’s abuse of Hooker or Hooker’s of Slocum is more violent. Schurz, whose later testimony, as to Chancellorsville, is so helpful to his chief, attacks him bitterly, and with much apparent justice, in regard to Wauhatchie. Schofield, who is always diplomatic, implies that Hooker’s manœuvres in Georgia were not conducted with very much reference to those with whom he should have coöperated.

But the chief figure in this last act of Hooker’s tragedy is Sherman. Most of us will recognize that, with all Sherman’s charm and all his vivacity, it must have been a bitter hard fate to serve under him, when you did not like him and he did not like you. Now Hooker and Sherman resembled each other in too many points to get along happily together, at any rate in an official relation. From the first there was a jealousy between them which showed in curious little ways, as in the story of their both coming under a hot fire and refusing to budge, — though all their staff, and even the stolid Thomas, had retreated, — simply because neither was willing to stir a foot before the other.

That Hooker was partially to blame for these relations cannot be doubted. But how much? Let us consider first the enthusiastic evidence of Colonel Stone. ‘Hooker’s faults were sufficiently apparent; but from the day this campaign opened I had daily intercourse with him, and no more subordinate or obedient officer served in this army. No matter how unwelcome an order he received, or the time he received it, he was the only one who invariably obeyed it promptly, cheerfully, ungrudgingly. And I saw him at all hours, — day, dawn, and midnight — morning and evening, — and never when he was not ready and anxious to do his whole duty.’

This is delightful testimony as to deeds, the hand; but words, the tongue, — you remember what it had been a year before. In the essential letter to Chase, above referred to, written before the Atlanta campaign began, Hooker said, ‘Sherman is an active, energetic officer, but in judgment is as infirm as Burnside. He will never be successful. Please remember what I tell you.’ That he expressed these opinions, in season and out of season, where they were sure to do more injury to him than to his commander, is absolutely proved by the extraordinary letter of warning written by Hooker’s nearest friend and supporter, Butterfield. No more admirable and more really friendly words were ever addressed by inferior to superior. ‘You should not speak in the presence of others as you did in my presence and that of Colonel Wood to-day, regarding General Sherman and his operations ... I am talking as a friend to you. What I have stated above is substantially charged against you with regard to both McClellan and Burnside. Don’t give these accusations further weight by remarks concerning Sherman ... I know how hard it is for you to conceal your honest opinions . . . These opinions travel as “Hooker’s opinions.” Your own staff are impregnated with them, and you will be accused in future by any officer serving under you who may fall under your censure, with verbal insubordination . . . You never were, nor never will be a politic man, but you must be guarded. It will be charged by evildisposed persons that you are ambitious to fill Sherman’s place — not in your hearing or mine — but it is the way of the world and will be said.’

Who of us would not esteem himself fortunate to have a friend who would speak like that?

But it did no good. Perhaps it never does. Sherman disliked the words so much that he became very mistrustful of the deeds. He had a tongue of his own and he lashed Hooker with it, as if he were a schoolboy, and then naïvely explained that he had said less than the occasion demanded. He had his bitter, unworthy sarcasms, also, as when Hooker dilated on the men he had lost and Sherman sneered, ‘Oh, they’ll turn up in a day or two.’ Finally, when McPherson was killed, Sherman put Howard over Hooker’s head into the vacant place.

It was too much and Hooker asked to be relieved. Who can blame him? It was a mistake, of course. He was thinking about his dignity. A man always makes a mistake when he thinks about his dignity. He should think about his work, and let others — or, by thinking about his work, make others — think about his dignity. But Hooker was no more perfect than the rest of us. And so the great fighter spent the last year of the war in the safe west, where there was no fighting, only petty intrigue, and newspaper riots, and police duty generally. But he was the same old Hooker still. Read the huge letter in which he foams and rages to Stanton over a rumored change of his headquarters, and Stanton’s quiet snub in three lines: ‘No order has been made or contemplated transferring headquarters of Northern Department to Columbus. Newspapers are not very good authority for the action of this Department.’

So he was a thoroughly human figure, delightful to study and to live with because of the intense humanity in his very mistakes and failures. He was not much besides a soldier; and even as a soldier he was not quite so brilliant as he thought he was. Yet he played a not undistinguished part in the greatest drama of American history, and with all his faults there was something about him of the true heroic stamp, something of the boyish, prating, blustering, panic-harboring, death-defying heroes of the Iliad. When I gaze at Massachusetts’s splendid tribute to him,¹ I think not of the weaknesses, but of the great fighting at Williamsburg, and Antietam, and Lookout, and in Georgia, and even more of the noble prayer to be given his old division back again, of the fine words about Howard, — ‘his offense to me was forgotten when he acknowledged it,’ — best of all, of the frank admission to Doubleday as to Chancellorsville, more heroic than any fighting, ‘Doubleday, I was not hurt by a shell, and I was not drunk. For once I lost confidence in Hooker, and that is all there was to it.’